Power Architecture® Power ISA Advancement to Enable Full Hardware Virtualization For The Embedded Space

Power.org™, the open collaborative organization that enables, develops and promotes Power Architecture® technology, has finalized the Power ISA™ Version 2.06 Revision B, which allows multiple operating systems to run over multiple embedded cores providing the requisite isolation and protection while increasing performance through hardware virtualization. Power ISA is the base for all power processor hardware and software.

"Power Architecture technology, the first to address multicore and hardware support for virtualization, previously integrated Power ISA enablement for those elements on servers in 2001, which has gained widespread use in commercial applications. Extending these capabilities to the embedded space is a natural progression for the technology," said Kaveh Massoudian, CTO, Power.org Strategic Alliance at IBM.

"Power ISA Version 2.06 Revision B continues to demonstrate unique differentiation by addressing both 32 and 64 bit for computing and embedded applications with a single, unified instruction set architecture, which delivers the industry's highest levels of scalability, flexibility, and reliability."

Increasingly, developers are adopting multicore SOC designs in the embedded space. The Power ISA Version 2.06 Revision B allows systems built to its specification to improve virtualization capabilities and to enhance reliability, important characteristics for multicore solutions. The enhancements introduced in this version take hardware virtualization to the embedded space and provide a standard approach for third party software that allows guest operating systems to leverage the hardware virtualization in a unified approach. This eliminates the need for redundant third party software and reduces development costs and at the same time helps accelerate market deployment schedules.

For more information and complete details on Version 2.06 Revision B, visit: